The International Energy Agency (IEA) said today that power generation from renewable sources will surpass generation by natural gas by 2016. Renewables will also generate twice as much power worldwide as nuclear energy in the same time frame.

The projection is included in the IEA's "Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report," and includes electricity generation from renewable sources like hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. Renewables are currently the fastest growing sector of the electricity generating sector, and they are expected to account for a quarter of global power generation by 2018, up from 20% in 2011.

The report was preceded by President Obama's "Climate Change Action Plan", Tuesday June 25th. Obama unveiled the Administrations tasks for the immediate future. "I'm setting a new goal," Obama said. "Your federal government will consume 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources within the next seven years."

Maria Van Der Hoevan, Executive Director of the IEA, presented the report while delivering the keynote speech at the Renewable Energy Finance Forum in New York. The report contains analysis of market trends for renewable electricity in more than 20 countries and regions and predictions that renewable power will increase by 40 percent in the next five years.

The President announced on Tuesday, 25th of June his Climate Change Action Plan.He spoke in Georgetown University, Washington DC, unveiling the plan's goals and strategies.

“We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but toall posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do sowould betray our children and future generations."

The President's focus was on the future. Although he acknowledged the long and laborious road ahead, his speech resonated with a confidence in the American people. Obama called upon the country to "stand up" and lead the way for renewable energy. In order to tackle the present issue of Climate Change, Obama stated that it was the responsibility of America, and it's people to lead the way.

With each small step taken, we get closer to the giant leap of an energy efficient society.

FORTUNE -- In the developed world, electricity is cheap and as available as the nearest outlet. But in off-the-grid Africa, energy poverty is endemic. Car batteries are tapped to charge mobile phones. Kerosene is a popular light source -- as well as a dirty, dangerous one.With national grid expansion lagging well behind growth in demand, increasingly Africans are looking not to centralized, fossil fuel-based solutions, but to the sun.To date, solar power plays only an auxiliary role in Africa's energy mix, but growth in solar use is emblematic of a regional shift toward renewables. In 2004, the African renewable energy sector was valued at $750 million. By 2011, it reached $3.6 billion. Late last year, the U.N. projected that by 2020 the value of the African renewable energy sector would reach $57 billion.Solar is particularly well-suited to sunny, equatorial Central and East Africa, where, in the words of one entrepreneur, "energy is every day beating people on the head." In recent years, the region has become a haven for renewable energy, spearheaded by small, tech-savvy companies keen to capitalize on the global south's hunger for energy.

Renewable energy grew at an extraordinary pace worldwide in 2012, with global solar power capacity up 42 percent and sales of hybrid electric vehicles surpassing more than 1 million for the first time in history.But the International Energy Agency said the increase in renewables isn’t enough to curb the march of climate change, because coal has continued to dominate growth in power generation around the world, led by China and India.Coal-fired power generation increased 45 percent from 2000 to 2010, far outpacing the 25 percent growth in non-fossil fuel energy. From 2010 to 2012, coal-fired power generation grew 6 percent, according to the IEA. China consumed nearly half of the world’s coal demand and India used nearly 11 percent.

Throughout decades of research on solar cells, one formula has been considered an absolute limit to the efficiency of such devices in converting sunlight into electricity: Called the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit, it posits that the ultimate conversion efficiency can never exceed 34 percent for a single optimized semiconductor junction.

Now, researchers at MIT have shown that there is a way to blow past that limit as easily as today’s jet fighters zoom through the sound barrier — which was also once seen as an ultimate limit.

Electricity demand from the UK could boost Ireland’s renewable energy industry following a government deal between the two countries.Ministers from the UK, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man yesterday announced an agreement to work more closely to exploit the islands’ wind and marine resources, as part of the British-Irish Council summit in London.This is hoped to lead to greater interconnection between the countries’ electricity grids, which would enable surplus energy in Ireland to be sold to Britain and vice versa, and make intermittent sources such as wind more attractive to investors.